Finally figured out this arduino stuff. My circuit finally works, and thanks to claude, I was able to test it with the arduino. The arduino is going to be a test trial for me to learn, but soon I’ll try to code the ESP 32 version - im pretty nervous but will prolly have claude helping me.
Side note: claude for circuit explaining was very helpful, it pointed out where my mistakes were very effectively!
Bye everyone!
Today I did a bunch of work on the arduino circuit and kinda got it to a place where i think it will work. AI use disclaimer - I did try to see if Chatgpt could help me understand how the parts on tinkercad interact with each other and learned a bunch about a ton of different components. I still think my wiring and stuff is wrong for the mosfet and diode and the whole motor circuit - still having kind of a hard time understanding it.
I think the reason I’m so confused is that the diode part of the circuit is supposed to protect the circuit from the voltage increase after the fan is turned off. I think thats because when the encoder stops sending the pulses to the arduino, which triggers the mosfet to close, stopping the current. I think that current is like flow of a river (just how i learned it), so if it suddenly stops (maybe a clog triggered by the mosfet), then voltage (pressure) increases a ton, which isn’t good for any pipes (wires and components i guess. I’m just confused on how to revert the voltage then, since it needs to go somewhere, so i have a diode from the negative terminal of the motor directly to ground (seems stupid ik), since then the pressure can go back to the ground to relieve itself instead of building up.
That was a long mind dump session. Anyways, I only did about an hour of work today since i had to study for Calc and did a TON of vibe coding for an app im building for myself. It’s my first time building an actual app rather than a webapp or something, so I’m learning a little and prompting a lot haha.
Thanks for reading all the way if you’re still here! Shout out @ball @gemzaidahmad and everyone else who’s been on this journey with me!
Pictures: Messy Arduino circuit (i tried to clean it up i promise) and Schematic
Shout out @gemzaidahmad! What a goat. (I’m assuming) he recommended to use TinkerCAD to try and design a circuit first, and that advice was really helpful. I’m not totally sure if this circuit works, but I’m slowly learning how to design the circuit, I’m gonna try first thing tomorrow morning to find out what I’m doing wrong and fix it. Thank you everyone who read this, and I hope you have a great day!
Today was alrighty - I tried to learn a bit of electronics off camera, but wasn’t really learning anything that I felt was useful for me right now. I plan on watching another channel that someone here recommended tomorrow!
Other than that, I just put some of the components into the case and was thinking about how the pcb and everything could be layed out so it will all fit inside the small little box.
Also, if anyone here knows how to make derived parts look pretty with all the colors and stuff (I’m just unioning them together) and importing them in, I would appreciate some feedback
Love yall!
Today was a lot of off screen learning about electronics. I used chatgpt to explain what the different parts of a circuit and pcb are, and then figured out the different parts that i needed to add based on its explanation of different components and voltage and current.
I realized that you can’t actually power a speaker or motor directly from the ESP 32. In the case of a motor, the intermediate is a mosfet (picture), and it allows the esp to open and close a gate that supplies higher power to the motor than what the ESP can supply. I’m still a super foggy on how different modules interact with the pcb and and if they are separately connected with jumper wires. These modules and parts are almost on a need to know basis in my brain, but I feel like I’m learning.
Finally, I know that I didn’t put in a ton of time today, but today was super stressful, and after a half day tomorrow, I’m actually going to meet some cool older tech entreprenuers. They aren’t working on companies anymore, but they are coaching startups, so i’m SUPER excited to talk to them!!! Anyways, after that, I should have time to study and do this over the long weekend. Yay!
Today was NOT productive. I hate PCB Design for now (once I learn it it will be my fav thing in the world trust lmao). I didn’t get much done and struggled to figure out what stuff meant and how to use the software and even figuring out where buttons were. I’m lowkey hecka busy today and for the next 4 or 5 days, so I’ll try to gradually figure KiCAD out. Fingers crossed~mikie
Nother devlog… Made some nice improvements to my CAD, but mostly figured out what components I needed for my circuit board and what the different parts look like and how many pins they require.
I haven’t ever integrated electronics into my designs, so it was interesting importing files like motors and screens but I haven’t figured out how to do it as well as others on here (They make it look so pretty!!). I also had some frustration with turning stuff into components and just didn’t take the time to figure out, so I kinda just left everything as a body.
For research, I did use AI to understand a bit about what each component was like and how it could be implemented well into my design. What i didn’t do is ask it for every component’s number of pins and lots of information. I also asked it about how Google Home and Alexa assistants stream music in hopes of adding music streaming instead of storing songs on a TF card, and by its responses, I’m not sure if that’s possible as of now :(
Picture of interior of model, and tbh i’m not sure if anything changed since last post, but second photo is the whole model rn.
If you made it this far, here’s a kiss goodbye!
Pivoted my original idea. I thought about a beatpad that you needed to recreate a beat, but I felt like that could be super annoying and just unplugged after a while. Also i didn’t really see keycaps working too well with it. Instead I still wanted to do music, but changed to a lil record player thing that you need to stop the disc from spinning, to turn off the alarm (turns down music). The alarm itself is some of my favorite drill music just super super loud in the morning, and then you rush to turn down the music and it settles to a nicer volume. Heres some of the CAD i made, theres the screen, a Vinyl that you stop, a hole for the volume dial (after you do wake up ig), and a nice chunky speaker. Still needa add the esp and allat, but i think its coming along nicely.
This is my first devlog I guess - Pretty chill session where I just brainstormed what I wanted to do for the blare alarm clock. I like music a lot, so i thought why not do a beat machine inspired idea. The premise is that it will have some of my favorite songs that can play (or should i say BLARE) on a leftover 3W speaker i had from a project a long long time ago, and you have to create a simple beat to make it stop playing or something.
